Marie Duplessis novel

I’ll have more on this later, but for now I wanted to briefly announce that Blood Diva is now available in the digital format, exclusively at Amazon through the Amazon Kindle Select program. This means it’s enrolled automatically in the Kindle Unlimited program which is a streaming service. It’s FREE for borrow to people who pay the monthly fee for Kindle Unlimited. (I will get paid a bit less than the full royalty — but something — every time a borrow reads 10% or more.)

Per the previous post, the Guardian’s willingness to review a “self-published book of the month” is huge, but the reality is the review is posted online only (kind of like a lot of books) and away from the rest of the book blog lest there be any contamination or chance that anyone not looking for it will find it. Honestly, trying to find it is like navigating in New Jersey without a GPS. This month’s premiere review managed to

Is it alright to admit I really don’t care about the current war between Hachette and Amazon? As a self-published author, Amazon has been good to me. Not great. They are not my friend. They take a nice cut out of my almost nonexistent sales, but they have allowed me into the club – not out of kindness, but for reasons of their own. They have offered me and thousands of losers like me a platform to reach readers and that’s something. It is not, contrary to what anyone says “an even playing field” — but it is something. And in this case, something is better than the closed doors of publishing houses and circular files of literary agencies.

I may not have the book ready yet, but here’s the cover. How did I come up with it? A happy accident I assure you. I had in mind something Galetea-like. I know that may surprise you as the book is a kind of vampire-mash up with a “real” historical figure, but she’s a figure who invented herself with a little help from the men in her life, and she’s more likable when we see her that way.

I was thinking of maybe a statue of a lady on a pedestal dripping blood. I was searching through images and somehow found this one by Georges Barbier. I’d never heard of Barbier before, but as it turned out, I think this was a perfect choice. He often drew women who were both innocent and dangerous and did opera posters as well. As you can see, I made some changes. It’s not water flowing in our illustration, but blood. There’s a dash more red on the lips, and the figure is